Sunday, November 6, 2011

A Good Night's Rest...

This weekend was the end of Daylight Savings Time here in the USA, so I hope everyone remembered to turn their clocks back one hour! I also hope you were able to enjoy that extra hour of sleep! :)

Unless you are like me...I like to stay up late, so that extra hour for me was an extra hour I could stay up and quilt and still "go to bed at my normal time"! :)

Either way, I hope you enjoyed your extra hour this weekend. Today starts the days of the sun going down "early"...which means about 5:30 PM at our house. There is a mountain behind our house so when the sun gets to a certain point on the horizon just past the top of that mountain, it's "down" for us. During the dead of winter, this turns into about 4:15 PM for us. :(

Last weekend when we went to Pittsburgh, we went to the Select Comfort Store, tried out their beds, and ordered us a mattress to fit into our existing bed frame. It arrived on Wednesday in this big box...

Sleep Number beds come disassembled so you have to assemble them yourself, but the instructions are very clear and pretty easy to do.

HOWEVER...before we could get to that point, Andy had to make some modifications to our existing bed frame...

Our bed was, originally, a waterbed that we purchased in December of 1986. How do I remember the date??? Well, it was one month before Erin was born! :) Silly things like that stay in my brain for some reason! LOL

I love this bed! I remember when our kids were young, on Sunday mornings both kids would come into our room and get on the bed and sit and play or talk with us. It was kind of our ritual. There are even teeth marks on the foot board from Erin! I would put her on the bed to watch TV while I dressed and she would crawl down to the foot and try to "teethe" on it when she was cutting teeth. :(

It's these kinds of memories that make getting rid of this bed frame hard to do...so instead of buying a whole new bed...$$$...Andy had to make some adjustments to this one to hold the new mattress which is not as deep as the frame.

Anyway...back to the bed...we loved the waterbed very much, but when we moved into this house and our bedroom was on the second floor, we weren't sure that there was enough support below our floor to support the weight of a waterbed. So at that time we went and got us a cheapo air mattress that was made to fit into a waterbed frame. All the air was in one large chamber so that both people had to agree on the softness/firmness, which between Andy & me is not an easy decision. To put the air into the mattress you had to use a manual pump that got difficult to operate once the mattress started getting full. About twice a year or so we would have to "add" air to the mattress just because it would lose a little over time.

We had placed a 4" memory foam topper on top of the mattress, so it wasn't too bad to sleep on...unless it was down on air...in which case, it "hammocked". Until more air was added...which meant stripping the entire bed to get to the air inlet hole...the bed was VERY uncomfortable. Needless to say, the whole thing was a hassle to deal with...thus causing us to make a decision to buy a new mattress.
This is what the frame looked like after removing the old air mattress and liner...

Andy needed to build up the base by 2" so the new mattress would be the same height as the side rails. On top of the current base, he put some 2 X 4's and then some new plywood on top of those...

Now it was time to start assembling the components of the mattress that looked like this when we unpacked them...

Yeah...doesn't look like much, does it! LOL I didn't get a picture of the electric pump, but there was that, too.

We put the original waterbed liner back in the frame to protect the new mattress from the wood base. Then came the outside of the mattress and the foam "walls"...

Then the air chambers...two of them...so we can each choose the firmness on our side of the bed...

There is another piece of foam that runs down between the two air chambers that you can't see in this picture.

Next we added the padded top that zips on...making it look like a regular mattress...

Sleep Number has a memory foam topper that you can buy and add to the mattress, but since we already had one, we just used it, instead. I really need the memory foam to relieve the pressure points on my "curvy" body! Regular mattress are hell for me to sleep on because they don't "give" enough and I'm constantly waking up from the pain caused on the pressure points and have to change positions, causing me to toss and turn a lot. Doesn't make for good sleeping on vacations because hotel mattresses are too firm and feel like I'm sleeping on a slab of concrete. :( (BTW, Celeste...I LOVED the bed we slept on at your house because the mattress was SOFT!!)

Finally...our new bed is made and ready for that extra hour of sleep!

The instructions say to fill the air chambers completely and then, while laying on the bed, let the air out gradually until you get to your comfort level, which we did. I let more air out of my side than Andy did on his.

At first, I thought the mattress felt "harder" than our other mattress, even after letting air out, and I thought I would have trouble sleeping on it. Just because it was "different", I did take a little longer to fall asleep, but once I did, I slept very well and woke up with NO STIFFNESS this morning! Usually, I have trouble with my hips not wanting to straighten out immediately when I stand up...usually I have to take several steps before I can straighten out completely. But not this morning! YAY for that! I'm hoping that this new mattress will help alleviate some of the pressure on my back and help with my back pain over time!

I'm looking forward to more REALLY GOOD nights of sleep on this bed and have high hopes for it! :)